Looking for opinions on weird breeding experience

AmberLops

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Maybe it is her 3rd litter and the stress really got her. It happens...I've bought a few heavily pregnant does and for some of them, the long drive home did a number on them and their pregnancies.
I do have a doe who's on her 4th litter and she pulls out fur up until the kits are weaned. She seems to pull it at night and when it's a little cooler outside...maybe she thinks they'll be cold? I don't know!
 

Miss mouse

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Maybe it is her 3rd litter and the stress really got her. It happens...I've bought a few heavily pregnant does and for some of them, the long drive home did a number on them and their pregnancies.
I do have a doe who's on her 4th litter and she pulls out fur up until the kits are weaned. She seems to pull it at night and when it's a little cooler outside...maybe she thinks they'll be cold? I don't know!
That makes me feel much better. Thank you!
 

AmberLops

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You're welcome!
Rabbits are really strange and when you raise them things can/will go wrong and there will be issues...some are completely unexplainable... but it makes the good times a lot more fun :)
Yesterday was a terrible day in my rabbitry but here's hoping today is a better day! :fl
How many rabbits do you have altogether?
 

Miss mouse

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You're welcome!
Rabbits are really strange and when you raise them things can/will go wrong and there will be issues...some are completely unexplainable... but it makes the good times a lot more fun :)
Yesterday was a terrible day in my rabbitry but here's hoping today is a better day! :fl
How many rabbits do you have altogether?
I'm so sorry you had a terrible day.
We are starting from scratch right now so just the 3 and I'm supposed to be picking up a male in the next couple weeks but that breeder stopped communicating so we'll see.
We're moving to an acreage in the next couple weeks as well so once the rabbit house is built and everyone is settled I'll start breeding more
 

Bunnylady

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I agree with @AmberLops , your doe's color is Tort (Tortoise, Tortoiseshell). Crossing a Fawn to a Black or Blue might not result in Torts in the first generation, but it gets all the right genes in the pool; it is possible for a purebred Flemish to be a Tort.

In some ways, I think this breeder pulled a P. T. Barnum on the OP ("there's a sucker born every minute"). You cannot guarantee the size of the litter, or even the arrival of a litter, on a bred doe, especially if the animal will be travelling much of a distance to its new home. I have seen does abort litters from stress, particularly travel stress (when you have fetuses lying on the floor, there's little doubt about what happened with that pregnancy). An animal that has been out of production for a while will often have a smaller litter when she gets put back on line, and a lot of does tend to taper down to infertility by age 4 - a 2-year-old could be starting that downward trend. Now, if the breeder wasn't basing the price on the guaranteed production, and this was all the buyer justifying paying a price that they otherwise wouldn't on an open doe, well, sorry, but that's on you, @Miss mouse :hu All things considered, the small size of the litter doesn't surprise me, but once again, as @AmberLops said, the fur at birth thing is something that sometimes appears in Netherland Dwarfs and Dwarf crosses, but I haven't heard of it happening in Giant breeds. Intriguing, to say the least.

Your BF's construction skills are impressive! But as you have seen, just having an enclosed space at one end of a hutch/run isn't enough, if you are going to breed. A wild doe digs a burrow that is only a little larger than she is to give birth in, which helps to keep her surprisingly mobile offspring together. This is why we use a nest box that is just a little bit longer, wider, and higher than the doe. If I have a doe that gives birth outside of the box, I put whatever nesting material she used in the box and put the babies in there. I then put the box in whatever corner the nest was in. It's usually pretty important to keep the babies together; that both of the kits survived is surprising, considering that one apparently missed so many meals. The size difference, and the size of the larger kit, are no surprise to me, given the circumstances. Apparently, does only produce a certain amount of milk, regardless of the litter size; litters as a whole seem to gain about the same amount of weight, whether there are many or just a few kits. Individual kits from numerically large litters grow slower than those from litters of just a few; one of the hazards of only a couple of kits in a litter is that they can grow too fast, and wind up with deformed bones and/or digestive issues.

Welcome to the world of rabbit keeping! Sounds like you are well on your way to understanding why I say my rabbits' slogan is, "how can we drive her crazy today?!":th
 
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Miss mouse

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Here's some more cuteness
 

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AmberLops

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I agree with @AmberLops , your doe's color is Tort (Tortoise, Tortoiseshell). Crossing a Fawn to a Black or Blue might not result in Torts in the first generation, but it gets all the right genes in the pool; it is possible for a purebred Flemish to be a Tort.

In some ways, I think this breeder pulled a P. T. Barnum on the OP ("there's a sucker born every minute"). You cannot guarantee the size of the litter, or even the arrival of a litter, on a bred doe, especially if the animal will be travelling much of a distance to its new home. I have seen does abort litters from stress, particularly travel stress (when you have fetuses lying on the floor, there's little doubt about what happened with that pregnancy). An animal that has been out of production for a while will often have a smaller litter when she gets put back on line, and a lot of does tend to taper down to infertility by age 4 - a 2-year-old could be starting that downward trend. Now, if the breeder wasn't basing the price on the guaranteed production, and this was all the buyer justifying paying a price that they otherwise wouldn't on an open doe, well, sorry, but that's on you, @Miss mouse :hu All things considered, the small size of the litter doesn't surprise me, but once again, as @AmberLops said, the fur at birth thing is something that sometimes appears in Netherland Dwarfs and Dwarf crosses, but I haven't heard of it happening in Giant breeds. Intriguing, to say the least.

Your BF's construction skills are impressive! But as you have seen, just having an enclosed space at one end of a hutch/run isn't enough, if you are going to breed. A wild doe digs a burrow that is only a little larger than she is to give birth in, which helps to keep her surprisingly mobile offspring together. This is why we use a nest box that is just a little bit longer, wider, and higher than the doe. If I have a doe that gives birth outside of the box, I put whatever nesting material she used in the box and put the babies in there. I then put the box in whatever corner the nest was in. It's usually pretty important to keep the babies together; that both of the kits survived is surprising, considering that one apparently missed so many meals. The size difference, and the size of the larger kit, are no surprise to me, given the circumstances. Apparently, does only produce a certain amount of milk, regardless of the litter size; litters as a whole seem to gain about the same amount of weight, whether there are many or just a few kits. Individual kits from numerically large litters grow slower than those from litters of just a few; one of the hazards of only a couple of kits in a litter is that they can grow too fast, and wind up with deformed bones and/or digestive issues.

Welcome to the world of rabbit keeping! Sounds like you are well on your way to understanding why I say my rabbits' slogan is, "how can we drive her crazy today?!":th
Ha ha I love your slogan!! :lol: It's right on the money
 
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